Game Review

3D Twist & Match Review

There are quite a few games on DSiWare which started off as part of another title but have been released seperately. However, there's also quite a few games that seem like they really should've been part of something else, and 3D Twist & Match undoubtedly falls into the latter category.

The sole objective here is to rotate objects to make them match the silhouette in the background. That already seems like something you'd play as a simplistic minigame in some party game, so we weren't surprised to find out that this is exactly as simple as it sounds.

There are three game modes on offer, but truth be told you'll probably really only be playing one of them. In Classic, you simply keep going through the shapes attempting to match them up to the silhouettes. If you do it quickly enough, you'll keep the same object but have to orientate it slightly differently, thus getting you simple extra points, but after this happens a few times or if you're too slow, you'll go on to the next object. The time limit is rather generous, but only a small amount of it will be restored every time you get a match, so don't wait around too long.

Rush mode is basically the same, there's just no repeating objects and no "extra time". In this mode, you'll have to match each object once with a much shorter amount of time than in Classic. Get it right, and you'll go to the next with a completely refilled time bar. Basically, the same thing, but with speed being a bit more of an issue. However, we would imagine that you're trying to be as quick as possible regardless of the mode, so the fact that you've got less time here is really a bit irrelevant.

Finally there's Practice mode where you can, of course, practise using any of the objects you've encountered thus far. It's a pretty cool feature, but with there being 200 objects total, it's going to take a long time trying to master how to match up every single object to any silhouette thrown at you.

3D Twist & Match is simplistic, which can be good or bad depending on your point of view, but it's also dragged down a bit by some annoying small things. The biggest problem is that the silhouette you're matching each object to is displayed almost directly behind them - This very often leads to not being able to see a vital part of the silhouette as you're turning your current item. We honestly wouldn't have minded if the object and silhouette had been displayed next to each other instead.

The game's controls are also slightly annoying, as you cannot freely rotate each object, instead, you'll have to do it in increments, which means it would take four button presses to do one full rotation instead of very simply just doing a quick stylus swipe. Speaking of the stylus, don't bother with that at all: if you don't like the button controls you're going to hate the stylus controls even more, as every swipe has to go across very thin arrows displayed on the bottom screen. If you're off by a bit, nothing will happen, which ultimately just leads to wasting a ton of time.

The graphics and sound in the game are one of the few good points. They're not truly impressive, but after every few objects, the objects and the area surrounding them will change to a different theme, together with fitting, somewhat decent music.

Conclusion

3D Twist & Match sounds like a very simple game, and unfortunately, it is. There are three different modes, but none really do anything different to the base game, which isn't exactly too exciting to begin with. It would've been alright in this case, but the finicky controls and silhouette blocking drop it down to being just "decent."